Obamacare alternative is all ready to go

Republicans responding to my last Lebanon Daily News column objected to this statement: "Republicans who advocate repealing Obamacare must agree on a consolidated plan to replace it from a number of alternatives they've advanced."

They say, plausibly, that since Obamacare is thoroughly despised, and support has cratered to 26 percent, Republicans can win the Senate this year without a replacement plan.

They insist, also plausibly, that if Republicans offer an alternative plan early, it may contain features Democrats will demonize.

In a recent USA Today article, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus accurately described the Democrats' "something is better than nothing" defense of the unpopular law — it's "feeble" — but quoted Democratic National Committee chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz: "What is the Republican solution ... to ensuring that everybody in America has access to quality, affordable health care?"

Wasserman Schultz ignored the estimated 30 million Americans who will remain uninsured under Obamacare, so Priebus missed swatting her lob out of the park simply because Republicans haven't agreed "on a consolidated plan."

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In his whiff to Wasserman Schultz's softball question, Priebus overlooked the simple answer: An alternative to enable Obamacare's full repeal while covering the uninsured and those with pre-existing conditions.

In 2009, then-Sen. Jim DeMint proposed a refundable tax credit to Americans who buy health insurance in individual markets, to end unfairness in the tax code that allows employer plans to be purchased with pre-tax dollars.

The 2017 Project, an anti-Obamacare advocacy group, expanded on DeMint's idea, proposing $1,200 tax credits for those under 35; $2,100 for those 35 to 50; and $3,000 for those over 50; plus $900 per minor child. Before Obamacare went into effect, the federal government's numbers on insurance costs revealed that those tax credits, supplemented by no more than $15 per month from an individual's income, would pay for "catastrophic" health insurance for healthy people in all but five states with hyper-regulated insurance markets.

Allowing those people to buy insurance across state lines would enable them to escape artificially inflated premiums.

Compared to Obamacare, in 10 years these alternatives would save more than $1 trillion in direct spending while keeping the IRS out of health-care enforcement.

If Republicans win the Senate and legislate immediately, then, with a Republican White House in 2017, they can repeal and replace Obamacare and reverse its unprecedented, liberty-suppressing centralization of power.

My column also warned that "Democrats who advocate fixing Obamacare must offer their fixes."

If there were practical fixes Obamacare's nightmare, by now, vulnerable Democrats would have advanced them. Instead, they've aligned with an administration whose optimism approaches risible naïveté — or dishonesty.

As Obamacare's woes increase — and they will — enough worried Democrats may cooperate with Republicans to override presidential vetoes.

Either way, Republicans must propose an effective alternative so thinking voters can base their choices on something other than party loyalties.